Planisphere

New Poems

About the Book

“Ashbery is a national treasure.”—New York Times Book Review

The poetry of John Ashbery has been awarded virtually every conceivable literary prize including the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Planisphere is a new collection by one of America’s most innovative and influential poets—an exceptional artist whose work stands alongside the finest of Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, and Hart Crane. For more than half a century Ashbery has been producing timeless works such as Chinese Whispers, Hotel Lautréamont, A Wave, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and Where Shall I Wander. Planisphere is proof that the master only improves with age.

Book Description

Breathlike

Just as the day could use another hour,I need another idea. Not a conceptor a slogan. Something more like a rutmade thousands of years ago by one of the firstwheels as it rolled along. It never came backto see what it had done, and the rutjust stayed there, not thinking of itselfor calling attention to itself in any way.Sun baked it. Water stood, or rather satin it. Wind covered it with dust, then blew itaway. Always it was available to itselfwhen it wished to be, which wasn't often.

Then there was a cup and ball theoryI told you about. A lot of people had left the coast.Squirt conditions obtained. I forgot I overwhelmed youonce upon a time, between everybody's sound sleepand waking afterward, trying to piece togetherwhat had happened. The rut glimmeredthrough centuries of snow and after.I suppose it was trying to make some pointbut we never found out about that,having come to know each other years laterwhen our interest in zoning had revived again.

Educator and Librarian Resources

Critical Praise

“Ashbery helms a keen awareness of himself throughout...If he’s repetitive, it’s in the way that a beach is repetitive with sand, or the night sky is repetitive with stars.” —

” [Ashbery’s] productivity has done nothing to diminish his legendary inscrutability, not sap his notorious zest for playing havoc with nearly every convention and fixed idea about poetry under the sun.” —

“Deeply pleasurable...Ashbery still has his ear to the ground, he’s still listening, and the results are fun, funny, often wise, sometimes brilliant...” —

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